Week 4, Chapters 3 & 4 -- Digging Deeper Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

***WATCH OUT!! You need to start on this assignment at least 2 days before it is due! ***

Introduction:

The objective of this week's Digging Deeper assignment is for you to monitor your intake of calories, fats, carbohydrates, proteins, cholesterol, and sodium. By the end of this assignment, you should also be able to interpret and use a nutritional label.

This is a two-part assignment:

1. In the first part (5 points), you will monitor all food you eat for two days on an Excel spreadsheet. Save the spreadsheet to your computer, then use it to dissect the nutritional value of the food and calculate your total intake of its various components. You will turn in an electronic version of your own personal spreadsheet directly to your instructor at our D2L Dropbox.
2. In the second part, you will report on your impressions of your own eating habits to your classmates (3 points). You will complete this part as usual on the D2L discussion board forum for this week, along with your usual responses to each other's posts (2 points).

Part 1:

At least two days before this assignment is due, download the Excel spreadsheet you will need for this assignment. Save it to your computer. Print it out if you like, but you will eventually have to enter all of your information into the spreadsheet, do the calculations, and turn in the electronic version in our D2L Dropbox.

Use the spreadsheet to keep up with everything you eat, and its nutritional value, over the course of two days. This is obviously easiest if you prepare your own food, as the labels will all be available (if not, visit the grocery store to find those items and record their nutritional value). If you eat out, eat in the cafeteria or at your Greek house, the providers of these foods are supposed to have that information available upon request (for example, OU has a website called MyNutritionCalculator to calculate nutritional value on foods served at any of OU's food service facilities). Restaurants outside of OU also should maintain nutrition information on their websites.

Keep in mind that you will have to add things like oil if you eat fried foods (so look at nutritional label on the oil at the store; each fried item you eat will have 2-3 servings of oil. You can guess if it is 2 or 3 servings depending on how greasy it was!). Don't forget to add everything, like condiments, salad dressing, all your snacks, etc. And keep in mind the number of servings you eat! For example, a bag of chips may say a serving is 15 chips; if you eat 30 chips, that's 2 servings, so double the information on the label.

After you have written everything down, complete all of the calculations specified on the spreadsheet. You will need these Daily Recommended Values for the major components of food:

(In addition, the percent of total carbs from sugar should be less than 25%. The United States Recommended Daily Allowances, USRDA, does not state that guideline, but it appears in other sources.)

You may need to do simple math to determine some of the values. For example, a label might list total carbs = 40g, sugars = 15g, and fiber = 5g, so you would have to do the math to determine that complex carbs equal the remaining 25g (40 minus 15); ignore fiber, a complex carb already included in the total carb count.

Use this formula to calculate how your daily intake compares with the USRDA:

• Percent of USRDA = your daily intake/USRDA*100

For example, if you eat 25 g saturated fat on a 2000-calorie-a-day diet, you would calculate your fat intake like this:

• Percent of USRDA = 25 g saturated fat/20 g*100 = 125% of USRDA

For more information about food labels and these types of calculations, visit the Food and Drug Administration's website called How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label.

Don't hesitate to email your instructor if you need help.

Part 2:

On the D2L discussion board, write a commentary regarding your eating habits. You don't need to list all of the foods you ate, but be sure to allude to at least some of them. (Only your instructor will see the spreadsheet you filled out). Be sure to consider these topics in your commentary:

Your commentary should also compare your intake to the USRDA values. Note where you did especially well and where you did poorly with respect to your eating habits. Also note which foods you ate provided good nutritional content (high fiber, high percentage of complex carbs, low fat, etc.) and or especially poor nutritional content (low fiber, high sugar, high saturated fat, etc.)

Use D2L's spell checker (or the one on your word processor software, which will give you a word count as well). Proofread it yourself too, because spell checkers don't catch everything. When you are satisfied, post your completed assignment in the Digging Deeper forum for this week at the D2L discussion board.

The total word count for your commentary should be 400 or more; you can see a sample commentary here.

Part 3:

Respond to the Digging Deeper posts of at least two other students. (If you are the first or second person to post, you will have to check back later to complete this part of the assignment).

• Just as you spell checked and proofread your original post, you should do the same for your responses.
• Please respond to posts with 0 responses first; once every post has at least one response, you are free to choose any post to respond to.
• When you respond, please use the name of the student you are responding to. That is, say "Hi Trudy" or "Hi Paul" so that you can get used to the names of the people in class. (You can find a list of "real" names and preferred names at D2L).
• In your response, be sure you mention something specific that the writer did well. Also, specifically address anything you find that seems incorrect to you (phrased in a constructive way -- use the same language you would want someone else to use in telling you something you did wrong). I don't mean spelling errors and typographical errors. I mean more substantive comments. You may wish to argue with (or critique) what the student wrote, request supporting evidence, evaluate the student's argument, add new information, make a factual correction, or explain why you agree. Check out this page for more on the topic of good and bad responses.

After you have posted your assignment AND responded to two other students, go to Desire2Learn and complete the Gradebook Declaration for this week's Digging Deeper assignment. (Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

[Assignment written by Raelynn Deaton]

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM